Leftist Dictatorship Apologists / Third-World Fetishists / Shithole Tourism / Tankies, Wumao, and Vatniks - Western democracy is DEAD!

[Group Project Carrier]

Have you ever experienced such first-world ennui that you began to long for the shores of an exciting, exotic shithole like India or Egypt?

Have you ever hated your Western country so much that you became a white knight for any place your country’s government doesn’t like (e.g. Russia, China, Mexico) for the sake of being contrarian?

By the same token, have you ever felt so certain your country and its media were lying to you that you dismissed all conventional wisdom about such places as negative propaganda—without actually having done any research to prove it?

If not—hopefully—then this thread isn’t about you!

1.) What is a dictatorship? ​

Just to make this clear from the start, because this term is often bandied about in a “literally 1984” kind of way.
According to the Democracy-Dictatorship Index (backup; see page 3 for list), a country must meet all of four requirements in order to be considered a democracy:

1. The head of government must be voted in, or chosen by an elected body. (Switzerland’s president, for example, is selected by its parliament.)
2. The legislature must be voted in.
3. There must be at least two parties to vote between.
4. Following these rules, there must be alternations in power. (For an easy counterexample, think of how long Vladimir Putin has been in power.)

Your average apologist likely conflates dictatorships with countries whose governments simply don’t function well. They might call the United States a dictatorship because they don’t approve of the way Donald Trump is running it. They might be able to conceive of North Korea as a dictatorship—it’s such an obvious one that you’d be hard-pressed not to—but would never think of China as one, which it is due to being a one-party state (violating requirement #3).

2.) North K✪rea​

North Korea is governed by a hereditary, totalitarian dictatorship. Its human rights abuses are so numerous and so well-known that there’s almost no point in listing them. In case anyone forgot,

• It has the fourth-lowest score in the world on the Press Freedom Index (backup)—beat only by Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea. (If you’re not familiar with Eritrea, imagine African North Korea.)
• Its prisons are death factories. Outside of direct executions—whose victims can include children and even babies—many people also starve or are tortured to death. Prisoners are also subjected to human experiments, such as chemical weapons testing.
• North Korea still operates on a slave economy (backup), maintaining the practice at labor camps for political prisoners called kwalliso. Ten percent of the country’s population is considered enslaved according to the Global Slavery Index. which also rates the government’s level of action/response to it an amazing -3 out of 100. Additionally, it engages in both sex and labor trafficking.

The mistake that apologists make is assuming that outsiders are treated any better. As a tourist, this is your best-case scenario (backup):

• You cannot talk to any of the locals without authorization.
• You cannot use the local currency—and, anyway, you cannot visit any stores not intended specifically for foreigners.
• You are only permitted to travel with a designated guide, so you cannot go anywhere they don’t allow you to. You also cannot take pictures of anything without the guide’s permission.

At the very least, you’ll make it out alive, and you might even enjoy yourself a bit—though it’s hard to argue that it’s worth it, since your money is only further contributing to the Kim regime. The worst-case scenario, if you’re not smart enough to keep your head down and follow the rules, is ending up like Otto Warmbier (backup), who was imprisoned for stealing a propaganda poster from a forbidden section of the hotel he was staying in. (There are videos online of this allegedly forbidden place.) He was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor, caught botulism, and died at the age of 22. Botulism spreads through infected food and is generally fatal without treatment, but is the sort of disease you won’t see much of in a developed country. Such diseases, however, abound in North Korea—even if you don’t offend the government, you could still come away with tuberculosis or intestinal parasites (backup).

But there are people who want to live there! And even if they don’t themselves, they may still advertise or talk about North Korea as if it’s a livable country. Aside from the usual fetishism over “foreign cultures” of any kind—see also Islam sympathizers—what this boils down to in many cases is people imagining that North Korea offers a pared-down, simpler way of life, far from the rat race of the first world. They also believe (as with China, which will come later) that American propaganda is the primary cause of its negative reputation.

The first place we can look for such individuals is everyone’s favorite retardation farm, Reddit. Beliefs about the r/MovingToNorthKorea subreddit (backup) are mixed; some think it’s always been ironic, some think it’s always been unironic, and the sub’s sidebar itself claims that it's 100% serious. Realistically, it might have begun as an ironic subreddit, but has since been taken over by people who defend North Korea wholeheartedly. You can tell they mean it because quite a few of the posts are the typical “fuck America, [enemy country of America] is based” posts that you can find anywhere on Reddit now:

“Can we make one of these for North Korea?” (backup)

Spoiler: Image

“‘America FIRST. China LAST.’” (backup)



“This is Burger Corp.” (backup)



Occasionally there are also posts about what it would be like to literally move to North Korea. Well, it’s not the States, so it must be great, right?

“If anyone lives in NK, what’s it like living there?” (backup)



The comments:



And, of course, they’re very excited just to be able to visit too.

“Tourism is Open!” (backup)





Regarding visiting, YouTube is another good place to look. One example: "It was the coolest experience to be completely immersed in North Korean culture with people living their daily lives." (around 8:10)

Videos like this abound. The nature of North Korea means that you can’t exactly make a tourism video about it without shilling for it at least a little, even if they pay lip service to the actual misery that exists there.

The comments too, of course, will try to be “wholesome” and look for “the bright side” of an objectively awful situation:

3.) China (Wumao and China Enslavement)​

• Wumao: The Chinese term for the “Fifty Cent Party”, people paid to make pro-CCP posts on the internet. (“Fifty Cent” as in paid fifty cents per post.) Since its coinage, it has evolved into a general term used to describe people who defend China so hard, they come across as paid CCP agents.
• China Enslavement: Not its own syndrome but rather, often, a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome. As you’ve seen in the Reddit posts linked above, people who go to bat for North Korea for anti-USA reasons will also be likely to worship China. China worshippers, however, can come across as a bit more legitimate and even convincing than North Korea worshippers, because they can isolate specific things about China that they like. These include and are not limited to: not having to pay property tax on your house, high-speed rail, public infrastructure that goes up in a matter of days, healthier food, and cheaper/more accessible/better quality education.

China, as mentioned before, is a literal dictatorship, even if it doesn’t jump out in many people’s minds as a “bad country” the way North Korea does. A brief look:

• There are concentration camps in Xinjiang meant to detain ethnic Uyghurs (backup), under the pretense of combating “Islamist terrorism” (the Uyghurs are traditionally Muslim). Estimates have varied over the years as to how many people are interned in such camps, but they generally fall between one and two million (backup). Even if they are not interned, these people can be subjected to other punishments such as forced sterilization and heavy surveillance (backup), particularly if they exhibit “suspicious” characteristics such as not being sociable or entering their houses through the back door. About half a million children have also been estimated to be placed in boarding schools meant to indoctrinate them into becoming CCP supporters (backup).
• Though it has a smaller population than Xinjiang, many of these same human rights violations can apply to Tibet as well—the common thread between them being, of course, that China simply doesn’t treat its ethnic minorities very well. An added thing to note in Tibet is the Comfortable Housing Program, which consisted of the forced relocation of nomads and villagers living more traditional lifestyles in the countryside to larger towns—at the people’s own expense (backup).
• The “nail house” phenomenon—houses left standing in odd places, often half-destroyed where attached units have already been torn down—which results when people refuse to allow their houses to be torn down to make room for new developments (including the railways, roads, and bridges that wumao types often praise, which are so often shoddily built for the sake of haste and appearances that the phenomenon has its own name in Chinese [backup]). However, these people cannot prevent the demolition of their homes in all cases.
• China is one of the most polluted countries in the world; air pollution kills two million Chinese each year on average (backup).
• China’s working conditions (which, again according to Reddit, are “not that bad” [backup]) can actually be quite bad (backups: 1, 2). Many posts concerning a hypothetical move to China, often from people who self-admittedly know little to no Mandarin, ask about the feasibility of resuming their careers there. They can be quick to assume that most places in China are perfectly willing to hire foreigners, which is obviously untrue, but the Chinese job market is so brutal that there is substantial unemployment even among younger Chinese. (The rate is approaching 20%— backup here.) Potentially due to holdovers from Confucianism, older people and relatives of the employers are given deferential treatment.

But, again, this hardly deters unfortunate sufferers of China Enslavement. We have the usual suspects, such as Muh Walkability (backup):



Muh Safety (backup):



(some comments)



And, of course, the obnoxious touristy YouTubers with their simpering comment sections:

Also, Africans are white!

4.) Russia (Tankies and Vatniks/Vata)​

As mentioned before, Russia is also considered a dictatorship due to not having any alterations in executive power. It has also been one of the United States’ main a-logs since the before times (the Cold War), so there is occasionally also a historical component to modern-day Russia sympathizing.

(Note: I include the term tankie under this heading because the phrase was first associated with pro-Soviets specifically, but it can apply to an apologist of any country with an authoritarian communist past—or present—which includes North Korea and China).

The most common image that people may have of life in modern Russia is that, though much of the country is underserved and neglected outside of its two largest cities (Moscow and St. Petersberg), those two cities are worth living in and up-to-date with first-world standards. Nonetheless, they account for less than 15% of Russia’s population altogether (approximately 20 million people out of 144).

• Russia, like China, is an extremely large country with large swathes of territory to which the dominant ethnic group (Russians) are not indigenous. Russia has demarcated 21 such territories as “ethnic republics”, which altogether are home to an immense variety of peoples, each with their own customs and languages. The number of ethnic groups in Russia is estimated to be nearly 200. As you can imagine, this has contributed to a lot of internal unrest—look up the Chechens for an infamous example—especially as many of Russia’s minorities are slowly losing their native customs and languages. Udmurt, for example, saw a 41% decline in usage over the course of two decades (backup). But worst of all for Russia’s ethnic tensions has been the Russo-Ukrainian War, as numbers suggest conscription of a disproportionate number of minorities:

Spoiler: Context

Tuvans and Buryats (the native peoples of the first two regions on the chart) are Siberians—much more closely related to Mongols than Russians. The top 8 regions are all located in the icy far reaches of Russia: nowhere near Ukraine and definitely not big population centers, but full of Asiatic minorities. Not a coincidence.

• On the topic of minorities, Russia has its share of camps as well, intended to detain Ukrainians in Russian-occupied areas (backup). There are “filtration camps” through which Ukrainians are forcefully relocated to Russia—the conditions there, as you might expect, are awful and unhygienic, and the prisoners are subject to torture and starvation. There are also “re-education camps” intended for children, some of whom are returned to their families, though many thousands are relocated to Russia with new families or remain missing (backup).
• Russia censors media religiously, generally banning independent outlets, which are considered agents of foreign interference. As in many authoritarian regimes, people who publish media criticizing the government or related institutions can legally be punished for it—specifically, according to the 2019 Disrespect to Authorities Law (backup). Naturally, criticism of the Ukrainian/Crimean occupation is also disallowed. Laws related to so-called “misinformation” are generally broad in their wording, making it possible to apply them arbitrarily. On the aforementioned Press Freedom Index, Russia ranks 162nd out of 180—above China and North Korea, but below even places like Libya, Somalia, and Venezuela.
• In general, Russia’s most well-known societal issue is political corruption and police bribery, but that hardly seems special anymore in this day and age. (Two-thirds of the bribes were worth more than $135. One investigation, funny enough, found a golden toilet in a traffic cop’s mansion [backup].) Corruption estimates are not the most reliable, as they are dependent on people’s perception of corruption, but on these Russia routinely ranks as low as countries like Mexico or Iran (backup).

Altogether, however, as with the former two countries, there remain plenty of people willing to see Russia for its merits. And—as before—instead of acknowledging its merits alongside its flaws, they’re often willing to dismiss the country’s most glaring issue (i.e. the dictatorship) out of hand.

An example: “What’s life actually like in Russia?” (backup)



An excerpt from the top comment (long, so highlights added):



Regarding the alleged safety of the city streets—recall what was said before about the corruption of the police.

Similarly: “Is Russia as bad as media makes it out to be?” (backup)



Comments:





“Moving to russia - is it a good idea?” (backup)



Excerpted: “Can you give me advice on moving to Russia ? Here is my plan.” (backup)



A common thread among people expressing a desire to move there is the mention of open space and not wanting to live in congested cities—even though, as established, the “open” parts of Russia lack most of the things that Muscovites praise about the country, due to a severely unequal distribution of wealth and resources. Russia’s ethnic diversity is also praised often, which is ironic considering the government’s treatment of minorities; even real estate listings can be explicitly discriminatory (backup).

Tourist videos are much of the same; as in the comment on the first linked post, comparisons between Russia and the United States’ public infrastructure are common, even though that’s not something Russia has ever been known for.

Comments:

​

5.) Others​

Though there are plenty of other countries without such great “syndromes” around them, it is still funny to see people drooling over the prospect of being able to visit terrible, unsafe, or just generally creepy places. For these smaller-scale countries, it may not even necessarily boil down to anti-Americanism as in the former two cases, but rather a plain and simple “muh culture”. An example I quite like is Turkmenistan, which is considered one of the world’s “North Koreas” and is only ranked two positions above North Korea on the Press Freedom Index. It’s famous for appearing mostly empty and for having an eccentric dictator who imposed surreal laws against things like growing a beard and driving a black car in the capital city (backup).

An example of a comment on the linked video:

6.) Exceptional Individuals​

Though there may be sub-communities filled with dictatorship apologists and third-world fetishists, not many produce much of their own content—as shown, though they may fantasize about visiting or moving to non-Western countries, most lack the courage, money, or foolishness to actually do it. Also, though many leftist content creators may put out one or two pieces of dictatorship apologia, that may not constitute the primary focus of their social media presence. Certain people are more prominent within the community due to having large followings and consistently putting out pro-tankie content, from tourism videos to more formal political discussion.

Some examples include:

Lord* Miles / Miles Arthur Le-Vesconte Routledge (contributed by @millais)​

YouTube (backup), contains a link tree toward the bottom of his many other social media accounts
*Despite his branding on social media, he is not an actual lord.

Miles Routledge, born September 14, 1999, belongs to the most severe form of “shithole tourists” as mentioned in the title. There are many YouTube channels devoted to the exploration of countries that, while still third-world shitholes, are in some way interesting due to their “culture”, history, architecture, and/or natural beauty, which can apply broadly to many places in Asia, Latin America, and North Africa. These channels, however, actively attempt to minimize coverage of the negative aspects of the countries they visit—using the previous example of Turkmenistan, most tourists will focus on the bizarre grandeur of the city center (backup) and things such as the quality of the food or the friendliness of the locals.

Routledge, however, has made a name for himself touring war zones and attempting to infiltrate terrorist organizations such as ISIS and the Taliban. He does not engage in war tourism in order to increase awareness of what life is like in the countries he visits, which are some of the worst in the world (as if that would even be necessary)—rather, he has an agenda of whitewashing them, which his followers love:



These comments are from a video detailing his experience as a prisoner of the Taliban, which he described—as the third comment says—as a time during which he was taken care of, waited on by Taliban soldiers, and afforded every first-world comfort (such as pizza and video games):

Since then he has developed some connection with the Afghan national intelligence agency and has planned to start business ventures there. Also, his friendship with the Taliban got him banned from Canada (still effective as of this year) on terrorism charges, which he is very surprised about (backup).

Boy Boy (contributed by @sum ting wong and @Bucephalus)​

YouTube (backup), Twitch

An Australian YouTube channel founded in 2016 by Aleksa Vulović (born October 29, 1992) and Alex Apollonov (born April 28, 1992). These two, by a loose definition, are “comedians” famous for recording stunts that are intended to prove some political point, such as infiltrating an intelligence base, entering a casino while “sick” during the COVID-19 pandemic to show a lack of appropriate regulations, and—relevant to the purposes of this thread—going to a barber shop in North Korea to test the “popular myth” that haircuts needed to follow government regulations. (To see how arbitrary this experiment is, re-read the North Korea section of this post.)

Interestingly, similar to fellow leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, they openly admit to being propagandists (the tagline on their Patreon page: “Making Communist Propaganda For Idiots” [backup]) even though they and their followers employ propaganda as a dirty word against American sources that decry North Korea, as per this comment on the haircut video:



Another video uses the Otto Warmbier story (described previously) for shock value in order to make a statement about police brutality in the United States, with the following description:

The Midwestern Marx Institute (contributed by @Dead Lion)​

The “Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis”, which has a finger in most media pies: YouTube (backup), a podcast (backup), books (backup), and journal articles. (They also have an X/Twitter page—backup here.) They publish content relating to historical socialism as well as to current events—explaining why the American government needs to adopt Marxism, and also defending the government and actions of any enemy country of America (which, like Russia and China, are generally not real “communist” countries). As their program, unlike that of standard-grade dictatorship sympathizers, has pretenses to underlying political theory and scholarship—its staff is rife with history and philosophy PhDs—they also defend the reputations of defunct communist regimes and the dictators they belonged to (e.g. Castro, Stalin, Mao).

An amusing detail is that their own supporters often criticize their information. Comments from one video attributing the Russo-Ukrainian war to “Ukrainian Nazism”:







In another video, they also paid a visit to one of the world’s most legendary shitholes, Venezuela.

 

[Thé au lait]

I would definitely recommend delving into China's job market between the timed one minute interviews, the 老不死 generation refusing to retire, and youth employment skyrocketing due to nepotism and extreme worship for the elders so badly that they stopped publishing numbers.

 

[Heem 'em all.]

The two way shit flinging between SerpentZA/ laowai86/ other Anti-China youtubers, and their CCP paid expat detractors is always pretty fun.

​

 

[Jewthulhu]

I'd definitely add Russia simps to the list.

Also, would it be worth covering people who fetishize past dictatorships? It's not too hard to find commies who will fetishize Stalin's Russia, or even Maoist China, despite all reason.

 

[MARlNA]

I'd definitely add Russia simps to the list.

Also, would it be worth covering people who fetishize past dictatorships? It's not too hard to find commies who will fetishize Stalin's Russia, or even Maoist China, despite all reason.

Heavily agree. There is a LARGE group of tankies who rabidly defend Stalin like he is their own Jesus.

 

[RollingRock2]

Don't Fuentes and his "Groypers" simp for Iran and Russia because of a (supposed, in the case of Russia) lack of women's rights?

 

[TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!!]

China’s working conditions (which, again according to Reddit, are “not that bad” [backup link]) can actually be quite bad (backups: 1 2).

Which is rich coming from redditors who probably can't handle a Starbucks job much less even work.

 

[sum ting wong]

I used to watch this guys main channel where he builds shit. I was able to ignore the constant complaining about America from an Australian since his vids were entertaining but I think this video is what made me stop. I swear there's no way they weren't paid to make this, it's like they were given a list of talking points to just say BUT AMERICA IS WORSE. Stay on your prison colony cucks.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I remember the many times I perceived Mexico as paradise until I realized how shitty it really was when I almost died in a robbery attempt by straying into a shitty area. These nomads fabbricate the so called safety of Mexico while calling Canada a shithole when in reality Canada performs much better than Mexico and most people worry about dying from coyotes than thugs. Makes me happy to live and grow up in Canada. The only reason people called Canada, France and the United Kingdom a shithole whilst calling Mexico and Romania better is because first world countries are not corrupt enough for corrupt activist criminals such as Andrew Tate. Thank you very much for making this.

 

[Dead Lion]

I think you should add the Midwestern Marx people as their own segment. They simp for every single communist dictatorship past or present.

Their X Website (A) Youtube

Warning: engaging with these people gave me permanent brain damage.

But a great thread idea!

 

[el gooner]

definitely following this ,this thread is definitely going to be interesting lmao

 

[Dead Lion]

I used to watch this guys main channel where he builds shit. I was able to ignore the constant complaining about America from an Australian since his vids were entertaining but I think this video is what made me stop. I swear there's no way they weren't paid to make this, it's like they were given a list of talking points to just say BUT AMERICA IS WORSE. Stay on your prison colony cucks.

Remember when he tricked and backstabbed Brandon Herrera into lending him his guns to strap his guns to a robot only to spin the video into an anti-gun propaganda piece?

This guy probably deserves his very own thread to be honest.

 

[Kiwisee]

Should add Tankies in general, as they not only simp for communist dictatorships but they’re also furry homosexuals most of the time.

 

[Catch The Rainbow]

Syriangirl is a great example of one of these, being a strong supporter of Assads regime.

https://x.com/darlingube

Is a possibly trans pro Chinese person who goes on rants about how evil America is and how China was right to occupy tibet.

Zei Squirrel is another great example of one of these people

 

[Meat Target]

Don't Fuentes and his "Groypers" simp for Iran and Russia because of a (supposed, in the case of Russia) lack of women's rights?

And adjacent /pol/ dipshits who watched too much Thulean Perspective and their hatred for Jews has surpassed all rationality or justification, to the point that they think neanderthal dunecoons are their le fellow huwite Aryan brothers.

Just because the Jews are whiny, shifty assholes doesn't mean Muhammad Abunutsack won't sacrifice you to Allah for looking at him funny.

 

[WelperHelper99]

Half of south east Asia falls under this tbh. Oh this one Asian country has like zero crime! I wonder wh- they cut your hands off if you so much as litter or jaywalk. Kill you if you smoke that dank weed. Singapore in a nutshell.

 

[SigueSigueSpergnik]

The mistake that apologists make is assuming that outsiders are treated any better.

Or that other countries want them in the first place. "Imma move to England because Orange Man Bad!"

Yeah, good luck with that. Being whiny and petulant about politics generally isn't something that countries look upon as being a skill with which to potentially improve their standing when making an immigration visa decision.

 

[Thé au lait]

Half of south east Asia falls under this tbh. Oh this one Asian country has like zero crime! I wonder wh- they cut your hands off if you so much as litter or jaywalk. Kill you if you smoke that dank weed. Singapore in a nutshell.

I just told you I've already bought an HDB flat, you don't need to sell it to me

 

[Meat Target]

Half of south east Asia falls under this tbh. Oh this one Asian country has like zero crime! I wonder wh- they cut your hands off if you so much as litter or jaywalk. Kill you if you smoke that dank weed. Singapore in a nutshell.

Yeah, but Pol Pot was objectively correct about people with glasses.

 

[YellowIsACoolColor]

Yeah, but Pol Pot was objectively correct about people with glasses.

That meme is really unfunny and I hate seeing it being forced everywhere